RaveThe Skinny (UK)Proceeds by analogy. A screenplay, a photograph, an abstract painting, a museum, an olive grove, a psychic’s impossible perspective, even cinema itself, each returns to the same question: what becomes of reality once it has been catalysed by representation? Cusk’s answer is unsettling and original ... Life of M repeatedly entertains the possibility that our relation to reality has never taken any form that is not already once removed. The novel refuses either consolation or despair, gradually revealing performance to be as inescapable within domestic life as within celebrity. This gives Life of M its extraordinary gravity.
